Plenary speakers
Irina Smirnova
Since 2008 Irina Smirnova is a Professor at the Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany. She serves as the Head of the Institute of Thermal Separation Processes and vice-president of research of the TUHH. Her research interests include aerogels, high pressure processes, thermodynamics and separation technologies. Before that, the engineer was a visiting scientist at Sogang University in South Korea and worked until 2008 as a group leader and postdoctoral candidate at the Institute for Thermodynamics and Thermal Process Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and at the Institute for Thermal Process Engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Smirnova studied physical chemistry at the State University of St. Petersburg and received her doctorate in 2002 from the Technical University of Berlin on the synthesis and application of aerogels in process engineering. She completed her postdoctoral qualification in 2008 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In her scientific career, she has also been awarded the DECHEMA Young Academic Award, the Hamburg Teaching Award and the Ralf Dahrendorf Prize.
Denis Rodrigue
Denis Rodrigue obtained a B.Sc. (1991) and a Ph.D. (1996) in chemical engineering from Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Canada) with a specialization in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics. In 1996 he moved to Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada) where he is now full professor. Since then, he has been an invited professor at the University of Guadalajara (Mexico), the Technical Institute of Karlsruhe (Germany), the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), the University of Arts and Sciences of Hunan (China), the Technical University of Lodz (Poland), Polytech Tours (France) and Cracow University of Technology (Poland).
His main research areas are in the characterization and the modelling of the morphological / mechanical / thermal / rheological properties of polymer foams, blends and composites based on thermoplastics and elastomers. His main focus is related to polymer recycling and rheology.
Prof. Rodrigue published over 500 peer-reviewed articles and 30 book chapters which ranked him in the top 0.05% of the most influential scholars in 2023 and 2024 by ScholarGPS, as well as the top 2% in 2023 by Elsevier/Stanford University.
He is the founding Editor of the Journal of Green Construction and Technology and currently the co-editor of two international journals (Current Applied Polymer Science and Recycling), as well as a member of the editorial board of five others (Biopolymer Applications Journal; Cellular Polymers; Elastomery, Journal of Applied Material Science and Algerian Scientific Journal Platform).
Pierre Gavoille
Pierre Gavoille is in charge of the Gen4 and Innovative Nuclear R&D program at CEA Energy Division, covering the R&D activities mainly on Sodium Fast Reactors, as well as Molten Salt Reactors. The program also covers support from the CEA provided for LW-SMR and AMR Start-Ups, as well as research projects linked to the use of SMRs and AMR beyond electricity supply (industrial heat, hydrogen, synthetic fuels).
Prior to this position, he was in charge, from 2018 to 2022, of the Thermal Hydraulics and Fluid Mechanics Section, working on the simulation of nuclear reactor fluid mechanics under incidental and accidental conditions, both for LWR and Gen4 reactors.
Prior to that, from 2013 to 2018, he headed the laboratory of microscopy on irradiated materials, alongside with managing the work on first generation fuel cladding for the ASTRID project.
He began his career in industry, before to joining CEA in 2007, as a research engineer on irradiated materials.
Michael Buback
Michael Buback was born in Nobitz/Altenburg on Feb.16, 1945. He studied chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, where he received his PhD on “Vapor pressure, density and electrical conductivity of ammonium chloride up to the critical point” in 1972. After habilitation on “Quantitative infrared spectroscopy up to high temperature and pressure” in 1978, he was selected to be Heisenberg Fellow of the German Science Foundation (DFG). In 1981, he became professor of Applied Physical Chemistry at Georg-August-University of Göttingen where he obtained a full professorship for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry in 1995 after declining offers for chairs on Technical Chemistry from Technical University of Dortmund and from University of Heidelberg (in conjunction with the position of a director at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe). Michael Buback published more than 380 peer-reviewed papers with more than 12500 citations and an h-index of 54. In recognition of his achievements he received the Dechema Award, the Bunsen-Denkmuenze, the Herman F. Mark Medal and became Member of the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences at Goettingen in 2000.
His research interests focus on the entire area of radical polymerization with particular emphasis on studies into individual rate coefficients deduced from pulsed laser experiments carried out in conjunction with highly time-resolved in-line IR, near-IR, and EPR spectroscopy. In addition, Michael Buback investigated kinetics and phase behavior of chemical processes in extended ranges of pressure and temperature. Special expertise centers around the quantitative monitoring, via online vibrational spectroscopy, of species occurring during chemical transformations at pressures up to 7000 bar.
